TO:96 – Hildur Gudnadottir “Saman”

This album is about resonance: on “Saman”, which means “Together”, Hildur melts her voice with her cello, connecting the two instruments together. The result is a highly involving and moving album, recorded, mixed and mastered in Berlin. Hildur’s sylph-like vocals contrast beautifully with rich cello tones, resolving the tension between light and dark to produce a unique listening experience.

All tracks composed, performed and recorded by Hildur Guðnadóttir in Berlin, except Heyr Himnasmiður (track 4), composed by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, lyrics by Kolbeinn Tumason. Cello made by David Wiebe in 1991. [Cello nr 49]

9/10
Out of all the modern classical practitioners, Hildur Guðnadóttir is probably my favourite. That she shares her surname with a certain international superstar from the same country is quite fitting. Hildur’s music gives me goosebumps every time. If she hadn’t have grinned so sweetly at me from the digipak of her ‘Mount A’ album a few years ago I might never have become so smitten with this elegiac cello-drenched world of hers. Also her work with Hauschka on the incredible ‘Pan/Tone’ is arguably the finest release that the visionary Sonic Pieces imprint ever put out. That album is a dream from beginning to end. Like all her work. Yes, I’ve a major crush. Leave me alone!

I won’t harp on at length over this latest exquisitely-housed collection. Her cello drones are deep, low and emotionally penetrating, not to mention highly suspenseful, all setting your mind in a richly enticing chamber-like embrace. Then her beautiful ethereal voice joins the party a few tracks in causing me to melt into my chair with a creeping smile spreading over my fizzgog. This is sparse, powerful and stirring music with real pathos, resonance and integrity. By ‘Heima’ we’ve a different vibe emerging. Underpinned by thrumming, hypnotic bass cycles, this is a deliciously eerie piece with lost pixie lullaby vocals near-whispered in that gorgeous Icelandic tongue. The atmosphere of this song is so electric, so intimate that you could curl up and go to sleep inside of it. I’ll leave you to discover the subsequent half of the album in peace. Mark my words, you’ll thank me.

Another treasure from our Hildur on the ever rewarding Touch. Another one also for the collection methinks….. [Brian]

New York Times (UK):

An Icelandic cellist with a deep, singing tone, Hildur Gudnadottir has worked in settings spanning art-rock, new music and experimental-folk, but her solo output inhabits its own unnamable space. It’s a calm, echoing space, and on “Saman” (Touch) she makes it feel as still and sacred as a cathedral. On some pieces she sings in a faintly medieval mode, blending her high voice with her instrument’s overtones. She seems to be after a kind of enlightened solitude — only one track, “Heima,” features an additional musician, the bassist Skuli Sverrisson — and she often finds it, with a spirit both somber and generous.

A Closer Listen (USA):

Saman, which the liner notes indicate is Icelandic for “together”, grounds itself on a subtle form of melancholy, as if the listener was looking at a landscape where something cherished used to stand a long time ago. The ‘togetherness’ surely alludes to cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir‘s singing, in the sense that she’s incorporated her voice to an expression mostly based on the string instrument. However, there is another aspect to it, suggested perhaps by the album’s cover in its dislocation of conventional perspective: the sky in the water, the trees on a horizontal line, the plants that seem to compose a shore but in reality are another part of the river or lake… the mirror image seems to compose a life that knows no bounds, that weaves a whole in which everything flows into a rational form and yet is also deeply driven by emotionality. The voice and cello, like the sky and the water’s surface, grow into each other, shifting the perspective just enough to suggest the listener to think about that landscape where times meet, where it is no longer possible to know the place in separation of a memory of it, and the warmth of the sun mingles with the cold of the wind.

This is not to say, of course, that they become one, but that there is a playful degree of both in each, the voice flowing into the cello and vice versa, inviting us to hear the harmony as a companionship instead of as a balance, a coming together that treats the cello’s lament as a vocal one and the song’s uplifting melodies as the tones of strings. They do not attempt to define the landscape, to anchor it as irredeemably a memorial expression or a fact of nature, but to make the inner (the quiet, modern singing, the contemplative, long strikes of the bow) coincide with the outer (the quicker pulls and strikes, the choir-like medieval style of certain phrases) in an act of friendship – while the voice is not pervasive, it certainly seems to be meant to linger, to accompany the cello as it expresses the landscape into being. This composition of an organic whole leads the listener through a paradoxical movement that is simultaneously still, as the music intensely evokes a sadness that is carried for miles and miles by streams that nurture all sorts of life on the shores, life that, in drinking all that melancholy and looking up at the radiant sun finds an unspeakable joy, an understanding that the choice between one or the other has always been false.

Against other kinds of solo albums, Guðnadóttir’s playing is restrained, non-virtuosic, passionately modern in its affirmation that every piece, every note, is equal under harmony, that every moment of tears shed is as important as every smile and laughter. Together, the voice and cello work towards a multiplicity of goals, a great variety of feelings that is far from a unity, developing into an album that remains constantly open to re-interpretation, that treads on shape-shifter territory that is haunting and fulfilling, always at the same time, never at the same time. This is what makes Saman special, and it invites constant engagement as much as constant re-articulation: take it with you, change place, be alone or in the company of others, and it will nevertheless later seem to recreate the exact same memory in different ways. So go ahead, look at your surroundings, remember how they’ve changed, and let yourself become part of it not as its center but as its companion. [David Murrieta]

The Quietus (UK):

Icelandic cellist, Hildur Gudnadottir’s latest album, Saman, also somehow bears both lush and sparse qualities, but her sound is coloured a deep, rich russet compared to Jacaszek’s growing greenery. About two-thirds of her album’s 12 short pieces are reverent yet optimistic dances delivered on just one or two layers of solo cello, where additional elements would risk disguising the outstanding natural beauty they pose. On four of the tracks, however, Gudnadottir tentatively introduces an angelic voice to harmonise with the bowed textures to arrive at an irresistible interzone of Pärt-like hymn and European folk song.

Gudnadottir’s more wayward explorations are often found when invited to join the deceptively named duo, Angel, formed by ex Pan Sonic Ilpo Väisänen and Schneider™’s Dirk Dresselhaus. Recently released by Editions Mego, Terra Null., their seventh album, displays the vivid, natural results of her plucks and bows as they thread through the electronic arcs and tunnels of Väisänen and Dresselhaus’ oscillators. Apparently bearing a narrative based around notions on the “cultural darwinism” of colonialism, the results sound literally like a battle between electricity and nature, whose communion is perhaps found in the electrical synaptic activity of our brains. [Russell Cuzner]

Bleep (UK):

Icelandic cellist and vocalist Hildur Gudnadottir releases Saman, her fourth album for the long-running UK label Touch. Its title translates as Together, and reflects the harmony created by Gudnadottir’s own other-worldly vocals and the deftly rendered instrumentation of her cello playing. There is much space here, deeply felt silences balanced against the drawn-out passages of strings swept with true feeling. Wistful melodies and ominous passages abound, beauty and darkness drawn perfectly in equal measure. This is not just music to be listened to – this is to be taken in and felt.

Hildur Guðnadóttir is one of those stable artists on Touch, and obviously you know this Icelandic cello player, who also uses her voice. ‘Saman’ means ‘together’ and that’s about her using both instruments. Not always at the same time, as the cello seems to be the main instrument. I think I wouldn’t mind if she would use her voice a bit more. She plays the cello beautifully, but perhaps after a while you know what it sounds like. Guðnadóttir plays the instrument in a traditional way – a lover of classical music would as easily recognize this instrument. What is gone, or at least pushed to a background, is the use of a looper device. It’s there; it’s used but kept to a strict minimum. It marks time, sometimes. But by and large it’s the cello solo that plays here. Once her voice comes in, high, the interaction between cello and voice is great. Very spacious, angelic, but also sounding a more intense. Whereas the cello solo pieces sound nice, the true tension appears when both are used. I would strongly recommend an album in which she would explore both on a more equal level. Don’t get me wrong: this is a great album, but not entirely fulfilling my expectations, I guess. [FdeW]

The Touch label’s extensive roster only has a few artists who would be considered classical in the traditional sense, and Hildur Gudnadottir is one of those. With instrumentation consisting only of her cello and her voice on some of these pieces, and guest musician Skuli Sverrisson on bass for one of them, Saman is a stripped down affair that excels at what it intends to do, but does not step out of that comfort zone either.
The best pieces on this album are the ones in which Hildur pairs her voice with the cello, rather than just focusing on the instrument only. “Heyr Himnasmiður,” for example, sparingly uses both the strings and her voice, but the dramatic shifts in dynamic from near silence to pure, rich tone is brilliant. This excellent use of silence to magnify the sound appears again on “Líður,” immediately leading off with multi-tracked vocals and cello, but returning into silence throughout the composition.

“Heima,” featuring Skuli on bass, benefits from the inclusion of the additional instrumentation, with plucked strings and additional reverb (the cello playing being resonated through two grand pianos) adding a bit more complexity. The piece is soft, but a bit too busy to be peaceful, which keeps it interesting and helps it to stand out. The final composition, “Þoka,” is the odd one out, with a heavier sound and buzzy, less clean sounding strings, but is all the more memorable for that difference.

Shifting dynamics work extremely well on “Strokur” too, with forceful and deliberate swells of cello that go from loud to quiet and back, with high and low register notes that encompass the full sonic spectrum. Hildur maintains a slow pace on “Birting,” filling out the mix with some subtle layering and looping, for the most part the only overt processing used on this album. On “Í hring,” however, she pairs the low register drone that a cello can do so well with lighter, more melodic sounds a bit further in the mix. The dynamic does not shift drastically, but remains light and spacious throughout.

Saman is an album rich with Hildur Gudnadottir’s subtle cello and hushed voice, that delicately lingers for the 40 minute duration. It accomplishes this very well, but I wish there would have been a few more experimental or challenging moments that would stand out. The pieces where her voice is prominent, or a less traditional approach is used in the performance are the ones that are the most memorable. The other moments are pleasant, but are not quite as effectively captivating. [Creaig Dunton]

Hildur Guðnadóttir is from Iceland, a country I understand to be populated only by musicians. She is classically trained and highly accomplished, having composed scores for plays and films, winning the Icelandic Theater Award in 2011 for scoring King Lear. In addition to collaborating with an abundance of groups — Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, múm — she was also a member of polyphonic psych-folk group Stórsveit Nix Noltes, whose record Orkideur Hawai won me over after a friend randomly picked it up from a record store years ago.

Saman is Hildur’s fourth solo record, and like her collaborations and past material, it’s modest but crafted with care. It’s a delicate record of balances and obfuscations, consisting of sparse instrumentals composed of arrangements for cello and voice, the pairing of which form the dyad that represents togetherness — thus, Saman, which is Icelandic for “together.” The album subsists wholly on Hildur’s clarity of form, an insular composing style that neglects context and choreographs an unwitnessed journey with myriad shifts in mood and setting throughout each piece. But it’s not really a sad or happy album. It’s more transportive, malleable, adaptable. Some songs possess a romantic simplicity with little to no adornment, like “Heima,” which meanders from melancholy to peaceful in a strummed swing; others are lacquered with reverb to create a flowing drone, like the angelic/psychedelic choir of “Fra.” It’s an album that rewards, rather than demands, your attention. [Adam Devlin]

I watched a documentary on quantum physics yesterday. One particularly baffling aspect is that of “entanglement”, which says that the behaviour of two particles can be intrinsically linked in spite of any vast distance between them. I find myself returning to this as I listen to Guðnadóttir’s cello and voice navigating harmonic space; they are strong and independent when taken in isolation, and yet beautifully aware of how their angles and lines intersect. It’s like a mirror reflection liberated into free will and yet loyal to its original purpose, tracing the movements of the original while forever deviating. There is a triangle of attention and response between the cello, the voice and I, and during the points where Saman falls to its most delicate hush, I like to think that the instruments are responding to my presence as much as they respond to eachother.

What has always allured me is Guðnadóttir’s relationship with orientation and axis. Her movements – pendulum swoops, lingers of gravity and momentum in equilibrium – appear to be tethered to an invisible point in the audio space, around which she glides and swings as though tracing a circle circumference. On “Í hring”, I find myself rolling upon wave crests and turning green with seasickness; a toy of the ocean, tumbling between azure palms. On “Líður”, I stand precariously balanced on one leg upon a piano note in octave, as pillows of choral harmony hold me upright on either side. I am buoyed into balance by clouds of human breath, or perhaps something more divine – an energy smiling in the empty acoustic space. The absence and echo in each of these pieces is vast, and if I listen hard enough I can hear the dust catching the light of a stained glass window, or the twirl of a sunlight shaft as it showers through a hole in a factory ceiling. Guðnadóttir seems to rouse emptiness into life again, her cello a dawn chorus for walls and floors that have long between without warmth and touch. [Jack Chuter]

This, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s fourth album on Touch, sees the cellist blending her layered instrumentation with delicately evocative vocals. Aptly named Saman, which according to Touch, means ‘together’, the union of the instruments is a successful one, with each part resting on thoughtful progressions and restrained delivery to produce a cohesive, but perhaps slightly underdeveloped, album.

The timbre of the solo cello lends itself to the introspective and even sombre emotions at play here, accentuated by the spacious, not quite sparse, arrangement. While Saman does not rely on studio trickery or grandiose virtuosity to propel the experience, it is nonetheless a cinematic production that both captures the intimacy of the deft enunciation of the cello, while at the same creating the august yet ethereal soundstage in which the often uneasy compositions reside.

Saman opens with the long bowed notes of ‘Strokur’, effectively introducing the emotional landscape of the album. It is an invitation to listen closely, with the rich harmonics of the instrument demanding the ear’s attention. There is no promise of an easy experience though, with this track’s contrasting dynamics and plaintive melodies being underpinned by a finely developed structural arrangement, highlighting it as one of the album’s finest pieces.

Acoustic drones envelop a fleeting vocal melody, and the second track, Frá, is gone as quickly as it came. This brevity is a feature of this album, with six of the 12 tracks clocking in at under three minutes. Frá is served well by this concise approach, but elsewhere tracks are left like snippets of an overheard conversation, leaving me quite wisftul for how the composition could have developed.

Elsewhere the dreamy arpeggiations of ‘Heima’ are accentuated by Hildur’s breathy, somewhat quivering vocals, combining to great effect. The arrangement shapes to great effect the sense of unease afforded by a sublimely structured chromatic vocal melody that is in equal parts light and dark. The shade is certainly stronger in the following track, though – ‘Í Hring’ utilises a descending ostinato to develop the tension to almost breaking point, and its release into the opening of ‘Rennur upp’ is surely the thematic crescendo of the album.

Saman’s sub 40 min playing length does not allow the listening experience to outstay its welcome, however its succinctness tends to accentuate the brevity of some of the tracks contained therein. There is a lack of resolution present throughout, in which the silence between the pieces is filled with the slight unease of things not yet finished. Nonetheless Saman is an intriguing album that rewards the listener by being as engaging intellectually as it is emotionally, and marks another fine release from Touch and Hildur Guðnadóttir. [Oliver Keefe]

Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir is well known for her collaborations with the likes of Fever Ray, Throbbing Gristle, Pan Sonic, Hauschka and múm, among others, but her solo work has tended towards the true solo. Even on her fourth solo album, only one track features another musician; the six-string fretted cello of Skúli Sverrisson resonates through two grand pianos on “Heima.” “Heyr Himnasmiðu” was written by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, with lyrics by Kolbeinn Tumason, and a few tracks were recorded by Francesco Donadello (who also helped mix the whole thing at Vox-Ton Studio in Berlin), but the rest of Saman was composed, performed and recorded by Guðnadóttir herself.
The sound, while sparse and haunting in line with her other albums, rips apart the seams between Guðnadóttir’s groaning cello and her angelic voice. The cello sounds closer to the human voice than almost every other classical instrument, so it’s a natural fit on paper, but few others could meld them so evocatively as Guðnadóttir did, and with such little help. That personal nature is what really brings Saman together. [Alan Ranta]

Travelogue Week (net radio):

Saman was released in June 2014 by Icelandic cellist, composer and singer Hildur Gudnadottir. Its title means “together” in English, hinting at the way she melds cello and voice into a beautiful sonic alchemy. The playing on the album is exquiste. The sonority of her cello is crystal clear and richly reverberant, able to fill the aural space all on its own, as it does on such stunning tracks as ‘Strokur’, ‘Birting’, “Rennur Upp’, and ‘Til Baka’. She also layers tracks to grand effect as on ‘Bær’ which resonates with rich beauty.
Even greater depth and expansiveness are acheived by the addition of Hildur’s ethereal Gregorian style vocals as in ‘Frá’ or ‘Heyr Himnasmiður’. Another nice touch is the addition of Skúli Sverrisson’s guitar to her soft vocal intonations on ‘Heima’. All in all Saman is a captivating and beguiling album and a must-listen for fans of cello music.

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